Dingle is clearly a tourist town, as almost every other house is either a Vacation Home or a B&B. The town has lots of pubs, restaurants and shops where the tourists are encouraged to spend some of their Euros. Dingle is also known for the traditional Irish Music and Dance, with most pubs having live entertainment nightly. There are also lots of local art galleries.
The weather has been mixed. It seems to rain every day for part of the day. The wind seems to blow all the time. On Sunday afternoon, we did a drive around part of the “Slea Head Drive” which takes you around the peninsula. The scenery was spectacular and dramatic, with green green grass and high rugged cliffs leading into the North Atlantic. The roads are narrow and you often have to pull to a stop when you meet a car. They encourage all traffic to drive clockwise to minimize the meeting of opposing traffic.
On the drive, we got to stop and see some old historical buildings. They have these stone houses that were built about 800 years ago called beehive houses. Have a look at the pictures to see one. Last night we went to a Folk Music Concert held at a the local church. It lasted about 2 hours and was quite good. On man played a Uillean Pipe, an old Irish instrument. The air bag is inflated by bellows under the arm, instead of blowing like the Scotish Bagpipes. They joked that it took two weeks to learn how to play and 40 years to learn how to tune it. See the attached video.
The kids seem to be enjoying Dingle. The local TV has only about 3 channels and is often fuzzy. The DVD player won’t play our DVD’s (DVD’s purchased in North America only play on North American machines) – so they have been watching DVD’s on my Laptop. The house also doesn’t have Internet access (what was I thinking) so we have to go to a local Internet Cafe to hook up. The walk from our house to the downtown is about one kilometre, and we make the trip a couple of times a day. Kate has been ploughing through books – she has finished five since we left Canada and is starting to read them again as we can’t afford to keep her in fresh ones.
Chris has been also enjoying the walks into town and scenery. The house is very well equipped so it makes things easier. Most things are expensive in Ireland compared to Canada. Meals for example would be priced similar to what they would be in Canada, except the currency is in Euro’s making them about 70% more expensive than back home. We are all well, although I have an annoying stiff neck that doesn’t seem to want to get better.
Cheers for now
Ian
 |
| Ireland - Day 6 |
No comments:
Post a Comment